Keyholes
by lunchinanelevator
Summary: Four people who aren't at Kalinda's door and one who is. Reviews are still the best kind of views.
1. Will

"K?"

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Will never received one of Kalinda's change-of-address cards—she's ashamed now of even handing them out, of thinking a new street and a shiny new elevator were all it would take to deflect the inevitable—but it wouldn't be all that challenging to check her personnel file, she supposes. She's a little surprised that Will went out of his way, but it makes sense when she thinks about it.

"K? You in there?" It's Will's soft voice, the one he uses every time he realizes anew that she's feral.

Light hovers around the edge of the door like it's breathing. Kalinda can picture Will out there, jacket slung over his shoulder, the white-and-blue plaid shirt he's taken to wearing open at the collar to reassure those around him that he is not, in fact, practicing law. He's straining his eyes at her door, like if he squints hard enough he can see in.

He's been thinking they were two of a kind, and Kalinda was drawn into it, too, knowing over the corner of a bar or across a conference table that someone else knew the mechanics, felt the gears that were shifting underneath the conversations. But a shared cynicism, whatever kind of comfort it may be, isn't a shared understanding of danger. Risks for Will Gardner take place in courtrooms, bank accounts, hotel rooms; he wouldn't recognize her in this chair, her arms uncrossed the instant she heard the footsteps, trigger rasping beneath her pointer finger.

"Kalinda?" He draws the word out—a little drunk, probably, alone or with Callie Simko at one bar or another—and for a second Kalinda wants to cry, this name has been so goddamn good to her and now not even that is hers.

She stays still: her lights are off and he'll think she has already gone.


	2. Lana

Kalinda takes a certain perverse pleasure in echoing Lana's words from the previous week when she cracks the door open. "Are you crazy? I have a gun."

"And I'm sure that if I were to check it out, it would be legally registered to Kalinda Sharma with its serial number completely intact." Lana taps neatly manicured fingernails on the door. "Are you going to let me in?"

"Should I?" Kalinda's right shoulder is flush against the wall beside the door, handgun extending from her arm at her right thigh, and she cranes her neck to meet Lana's eyes.

"Kalinda, I had to. You know I had to. For work … you would, too. You know that." Kalinda doesn't know that, not anymore. Lana tucks her fingers around the doorframe, assuming, Kalinda guesses, that Kalinda wouldn't dare slam the door shut. "It'll be over soon, anyway. We've almost got him. Capone, tax evasion … you know. You weren't our only in."

"Oh."

"I wouldn't let anything happen to you." Lana has long-lashed, persuasive eyes, so smooth in their shifts that Kalinda might be inclined to be persuaded, if Lana only had the slightest idea what they were talking about.

"You should go."

"Let me in," says Lana.

"Why?"

"You came into my place." She locks her focus to Kalinda's. "I won't let anything happen to you."

The kiss is full and fierce and everything Kalinda needs right now, the magnetic pull of Lana's body so strong that for a second or two Kalinda's really convinced it could keep her safe. But she can't be kissing Lana here, in full view of the hallway that he could come walking down at any moment, and she can't let Lana see the other two guns still dusty on the bed, the hole in the wall.

"It doesn't matter whether you _let_ things happen or not," Kalinda says softly, pulling back. "They're going to happen."

"What things?" Lana purrs. Her hand is on Kalinda's thigh. Kalinda brushes it off.

The last time she saw Lana, a week ago, the fear of Lamond Bishop was rushing through her bloodstream. She'd left Lana's safe house as if Blake Calamar or some Bishop underling waited in the lobby, could almost feel the muzzle of his gun against her temple. She was terrified. Last week she couldn't have imagined anything worse.

And now, Lana asks an excellent question. What things are going to happen? Kalinda doesn't even know.

It would have been so easy for Kalinda to leave a week ago, to disappear, leave Lana to her guilt and the firm to its assumptions, not put anyone else in harm's way.

Even the real danger Bishop posed, might still pose, seems simple now. A few tears shed, maybe. But everyone would survive. Bishop would be done when he was done with her.

She can't be thinking like this.

"Kalinda," says Lana, cupping Kalinda's cheek in her palm, running a thumb along her cheekbone.

"Go home, Special Agent Delaney," Kalinda says, ducking her head. The bamboo print on the walls seems to pulsate. It's making her a little dizzy.

Lana drops her hand. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"Kalinda …"

"Not tonight," Kalinda says firmly.

The promise implicit in this statement causes a smile, almost impish, to cross Lana's face. She drops another kiss on Kalinda's lips—Kalinda lets her—and there's boldness in her walk as she turns back down the hall.

Kalinda slides the door shut, doesn't watch her walk away. Whatever's going to happen now, she's sure Lana will know about it in a few days.


	3. Cary

**Cary**

The footsteps are so light and the knock so gentle that on an ordinary night, a night when all of Kalinda's senses weren't springloaded, she probably would have missed them altogether. She listens, every hair on the back of her neck standing on end.

He barely waits for a minute, and then it sounds like he's turned around, back towards the elevators.

Kalinda knows the footsteps, she realizes, and before she can stop herself she's standing, has opened the door wide, stares down the hallway. "Cary."

There she is. She could get killed for him.

He turns, smiles, then catches the expression that she has probably been wearing all night. Kalinda's too wired and tired to disguise it.

"Are you all right?" he says.

"Yeah."

"Really," he says.

Kalinda shrugs, looks sideways.

"You seemed a little … off your game today. At work."

"I'm not allowed an off day?"

"You would be if you had them."

"I do have them."

"No. You're Kalinda."

She wants to smile. "Come in?"

She doesn't linger on his startled expression, instead trots into the apartment ahead of him, closing the door to the bedroom—there are still things he cannot, should not, see. When she turns around he's entered and shut the front door behind him. He looks amused at her sense of privacy, as if he expected nothing less of her, and she shrugs again, trying to make light of it.

"So this is your lair?" he asks. She's annoyed by how charming his half-smile is, even now.

"My inner sanctum." She doesn't know what to do with him.

"Nice decor."

"Shut up."

"Though I have to admit, I have a couple of questions about your feng shui." He indicates the armchair, clumsily facing the door. Then his eyes widen. "Kalinda."

Shit. "Yeah?"

He nods his head towards her gun, still tucked against the arm of the chair.

Shit. Shit. "Good thing you're not an ASA anymore." Although it's possible that spending the next few nights in the Cook County Jail would solve some of her problems. She tries to smile at Cary again, fails miserably.

He's crossed the room, is standing beside her, and she's irritated anew with how much taller he is. His eyes bore into hers like he's looking for something. Kalinda breaks the contact.

"It's that bad?" Cary says finally. "Whatever it is?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

It's not what Kalinda anticipated. She was waiting for a lecture, for some long-winded diatribe saying that this _couldn't_ be the answer, she just needed to think clearly, this wasn't safe, she knew what would happen if Florrick or one of her cop friends found out.

Instead he stands in her living room, as open to her as her door was open to him. She thinks of the smarmy kid just out of Harvard Law, the one who wanted to unlock her mystery, and then of the man who thrust his coat and arms over her to protect her from gunshots and broken glass, not even thinking about it.

"Thank you," Kalinda says.

"What can I do?"

Kalinda wishes, wishes with every follicle and every organ, that she could invite him to stay. That he could just sit here beside her, just wait. She is so tired of being alone.

But she refuses to let anyone else get pulled into this.

"You can go," Kalinda says quietly.

Cary sighs.

Kalinda waits.

"That's what you want?"

"That's what I need," she tells him. Her eyes are full, threatening to flood, and she blinks and swallows. She's pretty sure the only reason so many people think she's made of steel is because they never really look at her.

He brushes the hair off her face, and she's terrified he's going to kiss her again. That lack of caution isn't an option for her anymore. The front door isn't even locked. But either he can feel her resistance or that wasn't his intention in the first place.

"I need to know you're okay," he says.

"Yeah." Kalinda swallows again. He has to go now. "When I'm okay I'll let you know."


	4. Alicia

When she looks through the peephole she recoils, shock whipping through her body, and by the time she's got the door open she's shaking so hard she can't speak.

"Kalinda," says Alicia. Her face, as usual, betrays nothing.

Kalinda's too tired to get the shaking under control. She would _kill_ Alicia right now if the point of all the choices she'd made in the last several hours hadn't been to prevent exactly that.

Now Alicia notices the tremors, and some wrinkles appear on her brow. "Kalinda?" she says again, this time as if she were talking to a child, or to one of those terriers that thinks it's a guard dog.

Kalinda grips the handle on the door, trying to stop, and Alicia says, more timidly, "Leela?"

That at least is enough to bring Kalinda back to herself, though insufficient to quell her incipient hysteria. She grabs Alicia's wrist, pulls her into the apartment, shuts and locks the door.

"Are you an _idiot_?" she chokes out.

Alicia's eyebrows flick up. "Excuse me?"

"Fuck, Alicia." Kalinda's voice sounds ragged and desperate, not at all like her own. "He knows your _name._"

The room stills. Alicia stares at her.

Kalinda drops her eyes, and Alicia starts to take a visual inventory of the space, which only sets Kalinda more on edge. Alicia is in her home, the door to her bedroom still wide open, the tangled articles of clothing and dusty stacks of bills and, beyond them, the hole in the wall, all perfectly visible from here.

Forthcoming. Honest. Upfront. All very well for people who don't put other people in the line of fire with their secrets.

Kalinda watches Alicia notice the lights out the window, the blankness in the kitchen, the chaos in the bedroom, the handgun in the armchair. If Kalinda hadn't spent countless hours studying the nuances of Alicia's face, she probably wouldn't even think that she sees a flicker of comprehension. She does her best not to notice Alicia's gentle, tired beauty. On another night, in another world, she would be thrilled to have Alicia with her.

"Are my kids safe?" Alicia finally asks.

Oh.

Kalinda doesn't think Zach and Grace are at risk, not really, but the week has been painfully unpredictable. After all, Alicia Florrick, unlike Kalinda Sharma, is a public figure; half an hour of Googling and hacking and Kalinda's husband would have all he needed.

But if Alicia is here, the kids must be with Peter. Kalinda's never sure how to talk to Peter Florrick, who both saved her life and ruined it, but she'll have to. (And call late, so the kids never know it happened, so Alicia never finds out.) Peter remembers her then. He'll understand.

She's waited too long to answer the question, and anxiety is starting to ripple through Alicia's face again. "Yeah," Kalinda says. Giving her word. For what it's worth.

Alicia says, "Are you safe?"

Kalinda swallows. "I don't know."

A tear escapes Kalinda, despite her best efforts; she's pretty sure Alicia sees.

More silence, more of the room becoming a chasm around Kalinda. The city vibrates a dozen stories down, and he's somewhere on those streets, where he's learned her new name, found her license plate number, the dollars and cents of her tax debt, the American Social Security number that Peter Florrick helped her create.

Alicia has to leave.

"I'm sorry."

"What?" Kalinda says.

"I—wanted to tell you that." Alicia's face still doesn't move, but her eyes are lowered, the oddest, gentlest contrition.

"It would have happened anyway," says Kalinda after a moment. And it's true: for years she's just been waiting, the same prey she always was. She didn't shake him by escaping him. There must be another solution, and this must, one way or another, be it.

"Yes," says Alicia. "But you might—have been better prepared." Then she laughs, jerking her head at the gun, as if the very notion of Kalinda unprepared were absurd. She stops short when Kalinda doesn't return the smile.

Then her eyes widen, just a little, like they do when she's made a crucial connection. "Kalinda, is this why—"

Fuck, they cannot talk about this. "Yeah," Kalinda says quickly.

"Kalinda—"

"Don't."

Alicia studies her. "All right," she says.

"Please go home," says Kalinda. "Please."

"I don't even know where my—" Then Alicia stops, realizing anew, as she's done every time they've talked recently, that they're still incapable of real conversation. "All right."

It takes a few more moments of staring at Kalinda, gentle, probing, before Alicia actually goes to the door.


	5. Who It Is

**Who It Is**

She decides that moving would put her at a disadvantage. She doesn't answer, doesn't get up, lets him pick the lock.

When he opens the door, he's backlit, and it takes her a minute to make out his face. He smiles when he sees where she's sitting.

"Oh, Leela," he says, voice as low in his throat as she remembers. And he chuckles.

What can she say to that?

He's armed, of course—as her eyes adjust, she can pick out the shape of the holster beneath his bicep and there's something about the way he's holding his right ankle. Armed well enough that the gun on her lap (he'll recognize it, even with the serial number filed off; it's the one they used when he taught her to shoot) is meaningless to him, even though they both know she's a quicker and better shot than he is. He slides all the way into the apartment, closes the door, and now her eyes will have to adjust once again.

"Kalinda Sharma," he says, rolling the words over in his mouth. He leans against the wall, doesn't come any closer. "I like it."

"Yeah," she says, before she realizes it's the first word she's spoken in his presence and she would have liked to make a stronger choice.

"You look good too."

This time she doesn't answer.

He smiles at her silence and takes inventory of the room. She doesn't want to turn when he walks out of her field of vision—she's afraid she'll break if she moves—but she hears him notice all the things she would notice herself, the sparseness of the space, the weakness clear in the way she's positioned the armchair. She remembered, at least, to close the bedroom door, and she's grateful that on this go-round he doesn't touch it.

He strolls back into her sightline, leans on the wall of the vestibule. He's wearing a pair of jeans distressed by work rather than fashion, a black button-down shirt that seems suspiciously clean and pressed.

"So the Florrick wife is representing you?"

Her breath catches. "Yeah." So he doesn't understand about Alicia yet. Alicia's a cagey attorney in his mind, nothing more. She has to keep it that way.

"Nice." His smile leaks into his voice. "Very nice. I've been reading about them. He's made quite a comeback."

"He has."

"He's an interesting man."

"He is."

"You know him?"

There's an edge there. "In passing," Kalinda says, trying not to let the skipping of her heart rise up through her throat.

"Kalinda Sharma plays in the big leagues."

"Kalinda Sharma doesn't play."

He laughs at that. This time she meant him to, although she doesn't smile.

"So his wife is your supervisor? At Lockhart, Lyman, and Associates?"

"No."

"Diane Lockhart?"

Now he's just showing off. There's something he needs to know, something he's hoping she'll let it slip. "I get the job done."

"I don't doubt it."

He smiles fully now, knowing they've established the terms, and she almost smiles back.

"The only thing I don't understand is the check," he says.

She doesn't say anything. She realizes that he taught her to listen like this. Late nights and early mornings, oddly comfortable hours on Saturday afternoons, he would talk to people, mostly men, who Leela didn't even want to be in the same room with. Just when it seemed like he was cornered he would talk his way out of it, making use of an observation so sharp and so obscure it had been unimaginable to his interlocutors that he even noticed. She listened to him, then, and she got better at it. Better than he was, as was the case with almost everything he taught her—that was how she knew what was coming.

"I thought it was a coincidence, at first, when I did the books. But I couldn't get it out of my mind."

Panic and anger flash through Kalinda when she pictures the check, pictures taking it from Alicia's hand. She has to remind herself that it was all a series of mistakes, that Alicia had no idea what she was getting them into, that there was no way she could have known.

"And I was right," he says.

For weeks, for months after she arrived in Chicago she scoured every online news source she could think of, every community she could hack. There was never a word. After three weeks she had to find legitimate work anyway, and by the time Kalinda Sharma had references and a birth certificate and a work history she couldn't have cashed the check anyway, even if everything had worked out the way she planned. She had done her best to forget. She should have shredded it. At the very least she should have sealed it in the fucking wall.

"You didn't think I was in your fire."

No, she didn't. She runs her finger over the ridges of the gun barrel in her lap. Somehow it's reassuring. She doesn't breathe.

"But you wouldn't have …"

Kalinda's trying not to remember the fire, trying to forget every second of Leela's last few weeks. She doesn't need them here.

His eyebrows shoot up. "So you thought they were going to kill me?"

She wants him gone.

He smiles again, knows he's got it. "Sorry about that," he says.

She stands up.

"Have you been up all night?" he says. "You must be exhausted."

"And you," she says. "All that traveling."

In response, he wanders over to the couch against the window, sits down. Kalinda turns on her heel, stiff now from the hours of sitting still. Her breaths are coming shallow, fast. She tries to keep them silent anyway.

"Nice place," he says.

She doesn't say anything.

"The view," he says. "Right to the lake. It's impressive."

He turns away from the window, studies her. She swallows the impulse to turn away.

"You're doing well for yourself," he says slowly. "Very well."

"Can I get you something?" she says, biting off the words.

"Oh, don't worry about it, Leela. You should go to bed." He slips off his shoes, revealing gray socks and the edge of his ankle holster, and puts his feet up on the sofa. "I like Chicago. I think I'm gonna stay a while."


End file.
